


Transversal

by ossis



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Dreams, Found Footage, Ghosts, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossis/pseuds/ossis
Summary: Lodged between a copy ofSlaughterhouse Fiveand a biology textbook was, however, a VHS tape withBLACK FLAG — 2/4/86scrawled in black marker on the front sticker. Mikey had taken it home in the hopes of making a tradable bootleg out of it, while Gerard just wanted to watch it out of sheer curiosity.Written for My Trick or Treat Romance with the prompt: Found Footage.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: My Trick or Treat Romance





	Transversal

**Author's Note:**

> This fic loosely takes some plot points from Donnie Darko, though you don't need any knowledge of it to understand it. Thank you to my friend N for kicking my ass when needed, and thank you to throwupsparkles for organising this whole thing!

_“C’mon, Frankie, say something!”_

_The camera shook, moving across the crowded room until it stilled on a young man. It zoomed in, fluid and slow, on a hazel eye that crinkled with laughter as it met the lens. The person holding the camera laughed back, the video shaking with it, and then zoomed out to a waist shot of the boy. He was dark-haired and small, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt with a ribcage printed on it. Everyone around him seemed to be in a similar attire, and suddenly the blinking OCT 31, 1985 at the bottom of the screen made a lot of sense._

_“What?!” He asked, still giggling._

_“Say something!” The person behind the camera repeated. “You’re the birthday boy, Frank, where’s your speech!”_

_The man, Frank, rolled his eyes, though he looked amused. “You’re drunk.”_

_“So are you!”_

_“Don’t break my camera.”_

_“I won’t!” A huff. “Now give us the talk.”_

_“The talk?” Frank laughed and shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he was being coerced into it. “Alright, fine. Um.”_

_A cheer came from someone off screen, and the image got slightly more still. Someone could have set it down on a tripod, or the person holding it was trying to keep it nice and professional for the big speech. The room grew quieter, the chattering more subdued._

_“So,” Frank began; “I’m twenty-one today! Happy birthday to me.” Someone laughed, while another voice mockingly sang ‘happy birthday, dear Frankie’. “Um. Come to our shows?”_

_“That’s it?!”_

_“Dude, that sucked,” another voice added._

“–Gerard?” 

_Frank huffed. “Whatever! Hand me another beer, asshole.”_

“Gerard.” 

_There was laughter all around. Frank’s request was fulfilled by an unknown hand offering him a bottle of Heineken, and the camera shook again._

“Gerard!” 

A hand landed on his shoulder just as the tape ended with a whirring sound, making Gerard jump out of his skin. 

“Jesus, Mikey,” he said, clutching his heart and simultaneously trying to play it cool. He half-expected his brother to make fun of him for being so easily scared, but his face was serious and twisted with concern. Gerard hadn’t seen that kind of look in a long time. 

“You’re watching that thing again.” Mikey nodded towards the now-flickering TV, as if Gerard needed a reminder of the subject at hand. 

They’d found the tape during their first experience in urban exploration, an empty family house on East Drive on the way to the Blockbuster where Mikey worked. It was a strange place, cozy despite its state of abandonment, all white curtains and matching wallpapers decorated with blue roses. The couch in the living room had looked like it might have been comfortable before it got specked with dirt and slashed open, before its cushions had lost half their stuffing and sagged between the armrests with their springs out in the open. Gerard imagined how the previous owners might feel if they found out their house had become _this_ , a dusty relic slowly dying at the hands of time and vandalism, and his heart had ached with nostalgia. 

One of the bedrooms, smaller in size than the other two, was home to a large bookshelf that took up most of the right-side wall. The upper shelves were still stacked with books, and Gerard beckoned his brother over so they could read the titles just in case something strange or obscure popped up. 

The books turned out to be mostly classics with the exception of a few works for school and nonfiction. Lodged between a copy of _Slaughterhouse Five_ and a biology textbook was, however, a VHS tape with _BLACK FLAG — 2/4/86_ scrawled in black marker on the front sticker. Mikey had taken it home in the hopes of making a tradable bootleg out of it, while Gerard just wanted to watch it out of sheer curiosity. 

The first half of the tape was, just as the label promised, a recording of a Black Flag set from one of the front rows. The video shook in the hands of the person who held the camera, but Mikey seemed to be very pleased with the audio and began looking through Gerard’s things for a blank tape to make his bootleg. 

He was searching under Gerard’s bed when the show ended and the recording whirred to a stop. Gerard reached for the remote to shut it off, but to their surprise the footage had resumed, cutting to that strange home recording of the Halloween party. 

It was a fairly recent video – just three years old, according to its timestamp – and certainly nothing out of the ordinary. But there was _something_ about it, a strange, overwhelming feeling of sadness lodged deep in Gerard’s gut whenever he heard that choir of laughter and the cheering around that boy grinning on his TV screen. 

Maybe he was just projecting. Maybe the sadness came from his own envy, from the longing for a night of laughter and celebration and pretending to be someone else. Maybe he wanted to be the man in the video, a carefree-looking person with infectious smiles and fake blood smeared on his cheek. Whatever it was, it had made him rewind the tape and watch it over and over, through the night and well into the morning until Mikey found him in the exact same position he was when he left. 

“Have you slept at all?” He asked, as if he could read Gerard’s mind. 

Gerard shook his head, because there was no point in lying. “I just. I thought...” 

Mikey sighed as he pried the remote off his hands and turned the TV off. The display on the VCR blinked green. 

“Go to bed, G.” 

“It’s just...” He trailed off with an exasperated huff. He didn’t know what to tell Mikey that wouldn’t make him sound like a lunatic. “This thing is weird.” 

“Okay, look,” Mikey began in that tone he used for interventions; “Is this about writing?” 

Gerard frowned. “Huh?” 

“I just know how you get,” Mikey said with a shrug. “You fell asleep watching the Jesus movie every night when you were writing _Parade_.” 

Gerard cringed at the reminder. He would’ve liked to say he’d gotten better with managing his creative sprints, but the truth was that he still got lost in his own inspiration when he was writing. He felt charged with a frantic sort of energy, like he neither needed nor deserved rest until he’d churned out chapter after chapter in his own flesh and blood. It never failed to leave him ill and burnt out after he was done. 

This was different, though. It felt like the video was reeling him in instead of lodging itself into his brain looking for an outlet. It felt like he’d _been_ there, laughing with everyone else, like he could name each and every person in that room, if he tried hard enough. 

“It’s... not that,” Gerard decided. “This feels familiar. Do we know _any_ of these people?” 

Mikey shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Listen, I– I’ll think about it. You sleep, though, okay?” 

Gerard wasn’t really feeling like it, but he nodded out of sheer guilt for being yet again a reason for Mikey to worry. They’d chosen to live together because they genuinely liked spending time with each other, but being so close exposed them both to the other’s concern. During the first year or so of cohabitation, Gerard had worried himself sick every other day because Mikey would leave for a party and not come back until after work; Mikey, on his part, was familiar enough with the patterns of Gerard’s self-destructive habits that he tried to get him to talk whenever he thought he spotted the beginnings of a bigger problem. Sometimes he was right, others simply felt like overwhelming fussing. 

It had taken them awhile to reach some semblance of balance. They’d talked it out, agreed to loosen up and trust each other to know and talk if they needed help, but still – if Gerard could ease the worried frown on Mikey’s face, he always did his best to do so. 

Sleep came after hours of tossing and turning. His bed had been unkempt for days, the covers wrapped uncomfortably around his limbs while leaving his side exposed. The TV in the living room felt like an itch he kept ignoring. 

When he came to, he was sitting on that battered couch in the East Drive house. A large television set was in front of him, glowing with the still image of a face. The man from the video, Frank, stared back at him from the screen. 

“We should go out for coffee,” the TV said. 

Gerard blinked, and the room was no longer desolate wreckage. The material on which he was sitting had grown fuller, softer, the floors devoid of debris and dust. Frank was sitting next to him. 

“We should go out for coffee,” Frank repeated, static no longer distorting his voice. “Know each other better, you know? You can meet my parents, look under the floorboards in my bedroom. That kind of thing.” 

“I don’t know you,” Gerard pointed out, puzzled. 

Frank looked at him like he’d grown two heads. “That’s what I’m saying.” 

Gerard woke mid-afternoon with the grip of loneliness around his throat. He heated up some leftovers, sat at his Amstrad and wrote a thousand words, feeling eyes on him the entire time. 

*** 

_“I don’t care that I’m being morbid. Life is short.”_

Under the floorboards in Frank’s bedroom was a cardboard box sealed with grey duct tape. Gerard was the one to notice the loose-fitting piece of wood to the right of an unbalanced bedside table, and he’d lifted it up in silence while his dream of Frank played in the back of his mind like an afterthought. Mikey was in another room – just taking pictures, he told Gerard, because the ones he’d taken during their first visit had come out over-exposed. 

In the box were more tapes, all carefully labelled by date with neon yellow stickers at the front. Despite looking like he desperately wanted to say something, Mikey was silent when they walked back home with it. 

_Frank was sitting alone in his bedroom, back to the bed as he stared into the camera._

_“There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you could drop dead, like, tomorrow.” He adjusted the beanie on his head and fiddled with the ring at the side of his lip. “The dude living alone at the end of the street died in his house last week and his cat licked his eyeballs.”_

_“I don’t want to die,” Frank said with a shrug. He looked around for a few seconds, then fished a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of the pocket of his hoodie. “But I’m going to.” He lit a cigarette and took a drag. “Someday.”_

“Who the fuck does that?” Mikey asked after he hit the pause button. 

Gerard blinked, but his eyes never wandered from the screen. “Does what?” 

“Sit in his bedroom, talking to a camera _._ It’s weird.” 

“It’s his diary,” Gerard said. He didn’t know where that thought was coming from, but it seemed true. “Maybe he wanted someone to find it.” 

Mikey snorted. “I’d rather burn alive than let anyone read my diary.” 

“You have a diary?” 

“Course not,” Mikey said a little too quickly, and silently pushed the play button on the remote. Gerard thought he heard him say, “not anymore,” as Frank’s wandering eyes came back into focus. 

_“All I want,” he told no one; “is to never be forgotten.”_

Frank was, Gerard learned through four hours of footage, a bright-eyed university student with a penchant for music and partying. He seemed like the kind of guy Gerard would pass on his way to the arcade, one of those he’d throw secret glances at before ducking his head in shame and heading the other way. Not an extrovert, but someone who liked people. His laugh was easy and contagious. 

It was clear by the way Frank spoke that he’d made and kept the tapes in fear that his friends and family would forget and move on past those moments. They felt like a memento, a testament; and like with any object that lives beyond the knowledge of its owner, Gerard found it hard to believe that they were merely three years old, that Frank was not a mysterious face from generations past but a young man his age who most likely moved somewhere happier and forgot about his small existential crisis. Though he felt like one, he was not a dead man – just someone who lived somewhere Gerard couldn’t see. 

“Do you really want to watch all of them?” Mikey asked once the first tape in the box had come to a stop. 

“Not in one sitting,” Gerard said with a shrug, merely for his brother’s sake. Had he lived alone, he probably would have. 

“Okay,” said Mikey, unconvinced. 

“What is it?” 

“I just... have a bad feeling about this.” 

“If it’s about me, it’s not like that,” Gerard said emphatically. It was true – he was trying not to forget himself. He’d been trying for the past year. “I’m just _interested_ , Mikey. Just that. It’s a weird thing we found, nothing more.” 

Mikey’s glance told him he didn’t fully believe Gerard’s hollow reassurances, but he didn’t say anything on the matter. Instead, he just looked at the blinking static on the screen and picked at his nails distractedly. He seemed lost. 

“It’s not that,” he said, quiet. “It feels _creepy_.” 

Gerard woke to a different room that night. He was still in bed, but the surface was harder, the sheets thin and rough where they touched his exposed skin. The floor was covered in a yellow-green moquette he would never dream of touching barefoot, the furniture ancient and all in varying shades of unnervingly similar dark browns that didn’t quite match. Through the curtains came a pale orange light, likely from a flickering street lamp close by. 

Frank was sitting cross-legged on an armchair at the foot of the bed, right by an unplugged television set. He was eating fries and blinking back at Gerard, intently watching him sit up on the mattress. 

“Where are we?” Gerard asked after a few moments of silence. 

“A motel,” Frank said easily. 

“A motel where?” 

“Between two highways, but I’m not sure where they go,” Frank replied. He picked up a soggy fry and hesitantly popped it into his mouth, cringing at the taste. “Why’s Mikey so worried?” 

“He’s my brother, of course he worries.” Gerard sighed. “I’m... complicated, I guess.” 

“Complicated how?” 

“I'm a writer,” Gerard began, thinking it stupid that he had to tell this story to his own dream. “Kinda been one since I won a stupid school competition when I was sixteen. Or, I felt like I _had_ to be one after that.” He tilted his head back against the headboard, feeling its edge on his scalp. “And I’m twenty-five, so I obviously don’t have a lot of experience. I only got one novel published and it did okay, I think. The publisher was impressed, but I don’t know. Mikey says I don’t pay enough attention to the public.” 

When he paused to look back at Frank, the amused expression he saw made him frown. “What?” 

“Oh, nothing,” Frank said with a giggle. “You got a bit lost.” 

Gerard looked down, feeling his cheeks go warm with shame. Some writer he was, spectacularly derailing from the point of his story. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Frank said, earnest. The packet of fries lay crumpled on the thick television frame, and he had begun busying himself with lighting up a cigarette. Lost as he was in the relaxed fall of Frank’s shoulders when he took the first drag, Gerard almost missed the outstretched hand offering him the packet and lighter. His murmured _thanks_ was accepted with a grin. 

“Anyway,” Gerard said, grateful for the warm smoke in his windpipe; “I get really into it sometimes. Writing, I mean. I forget to eat and sleep and then I get...” He cringed, not wanting to say it aloud. It took him a few seconds to relent. “Jealous, kind of. There’s not much to my life, you know? I’d rather be someone else for a while.” 

Frank nodded. “But this is different.” 

“That’s what I keep telling Mikey,” Gerard said, though he may as well be trying to convince himself he wasn’t falling into old habits. That sense of belonging he felt as he watched those videos of Frank could very easily have been fabricated by his own desires. Maybe it wasn’t interest – it was envy. Projection. 

“It _is_ different,” said Frank, as if reading his mind. “You’re not making me up.” 

“It makes sense that I would,” Gerard said, not really giving much weight to Frank’s reassurances. “I think I’d like to be you.” 

Silence came, followed by rustling as Frank stood from his armchair and approached the bed. He motioned for Gerard to scoot over and sat next to him, their shoulders pressing together. 

“You don’t want that,” he said, voice low and quiet. “You haven’t seen everything. You don’t know anything bad about me.” 

Gerard leaned forward to look at him. “Tell me then.” 

“Something bad?” At Gerard’s nod, he hummed. “I lie to good people.” 

Gerard shrugged. “Everyone lies.” 

“Ooh, tough crowd.” Frank said with a grin. “I pick fights.” 

“Oh yeah? Ever win them?” 

A shared cigarette turned into two, then three, and then Gerard stopped counting. He told Frank about the story he wrote for his first competition, a short little thing he’d made up from the stories he used to hear about a pond close to school from which the police used to fish dead bodies with alarming regularity. In return, Frank talked about his band, his friends, his mother and how her smile was always crooked because she was self-conscious about a chipped tooth no one could really see. He told Gerard about his dream of making it as a musician, university and stability be damned, because all he wanted was to reach out and make things people would love and remember. 

Halfway through a passionate explanation of _The Passion of Joan of Arc_ , Gerard realised his consciousness was slipping away with something akin to sleep. Frank didn’t seem to be affected by it, but he gave Gerard a wistful, understanding smile when he trailed off and lost track of his own words for the fourth time in a row. 

“Why don’t you go for now?” He asked, voice ringing clear like a bell. 

And so Gerard went, silent as death. 

Tucked in the space between a dream and the waking world was another room, small and filled with faceless shadows pressing against him from all directions. Their chattering was distorted and strange, almost like it had been slowed down. 

A loud voice cut through the noise, clear despite sizzling with static. It said, “this one goes out to Gerard!” and the shadows cheered, louder and louder until everything disappeared. 

The day ahead was jarringly dull. Mikey asked him how he was and headed out of the door with slumped shoulders, leaving Gerard at the mercy of his own creative torment. He made himself a late breakfast, sat at his desk and wrote his token amount of empty words with the only goal of watching more of Frank’s tapes. 

Everything Gerard had learned through his blurry conversation with Frank was proved true by the hours of footage that followed, and he didn’t know what to make of it. He’d started off thinking he was fooling himself, that his brain had been picking hidden bits and pieces of information and rearranging them while he slept. But one coincidence followed another, and then another, until they were so many it became impossible to brush them off as particularly sharp insights or deductions from simple details. Some of the things Frank said were so familiar they felt like memories. 

The crooked, bashful smile of Frank’s mother came in the picture, followed by a pearl of laughter, and Gerard belatedly realised his eyes were welling with tears. It was dark outside, and it was late, and he’d been sitting alone in front of his blinking neon green word processor for the entire day. His eyes were sore, as exhausted as he felt, and if Mikey had been in the room with him he would have used one of those easy excuses to explain his crying. But Mikey was asleep in his bedroom, still concerned yet fed up with Gerard’s obsession, so Gerard had no reason to hide the unmistakable feeling of grief tearing through his heart like a burning knife. It hurt. It made no sense. 

“ _Why,_ ” Gerard asked his empty bedroom. The television buzzed. Mikey wasn’t there, yet he didn’t feel alone. 

The sound of his own heart thumping in his ears was the only thing he could hear – until the tape clacked to a stop and jumped forwards on its own accord. 

Frank’s face came into view. He was in his room again, looking far into the distance. 

_“I’ve seen the end of the world,” he said; “And it’s a party.”_

Dawn came soft as a petal through his window. Gerard lay in bed and wished to dream of Frank, but he could not fall asleep. 

*** 

“We,” Mikey announced one afternoon as soon as he unlocked the front door; “Are going to a party.” 

“Tonight?” 

“No, on Halloween,” he said. “I’m giving you a two-week notice so you don’t make excuses.” 

“I wouldn’t.” And it was true – Gerard doubted he’d be in the mood for partying, but he felt like he owed Mikey. He should be trying to at least _look_ less unhappy. 

“You one-hundred percent would,” Mikey joked as he sat down on the couch. _Touché._

“Ah, by the way,” Mikey added casually; “When do you want to return the box?” 

“Huh?” 

“The tapes,” he clarified. “It’s just. I’m sorry I haven’t been watching them with you, but it’s just... weird home footage. It was pretty cool at first, but it’s gotten boring.” 

Gerard frowned. “Why do you want to get rid of them so bad?” 

“They’re boring.” 

“Mikey.” 

“We kind of _stole_ them.” 

“Mikey,” Gerard said again, more forcefully this time. “What are you _not_ telling me?” 

Finally, Mikey relented. “They freak me out, Gerard. I’ve been trying to tell you since the first.” He sighed. “Maybe I just feel guilty about it, I don’t know. I was looking for some batteries the other day and I thought I saw that Frank guy by the box.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“What difference does it make?” Mikey asked sharply. “Let’s just get _rid_ of them.” 

_But Frank would be sad_ , Gerard thought desperately. _Don’t forget him,_ and then – _don’t forget me._

“I can’t,” he said softly, paralysed by the sudden, foreign nature of his own thoughts. “Not yet.” 

Mikey frowned. “What?” 

“I need to see how it ends.” 

In a mild attempt to appease Mikey, the box was relocated to Gerard’s room. No spirits or ghouls came with it, and that strange feeling of being in someone’s presence kept following Gerard as if gravity had decentralised itself. He knew he was alone, though, from the moment he woke in his messy room through the hours he spent in front of a screen trying to make sense of his own characters, their motivations and their over-practiced conversations. He was alone when Mikey left to meet his friends, and he was alone when he called his mother and asked her how she was doing. 

He was alone, until he wasn’t: nighttime came with the excitement of knowing he was meeting with someone he could call a friend. Frank was there every single night from the moment Gerard turned on the TV until he fell asleep to Frank’s face, slipping then into a dream where they could finally talk and touch. 

The location changed every single night. They’d been in public restrooms, five-star hotel lobbies and hospital waiting rooms, and it was only ever the two of them. Frank talked about his songs and his fears, about being fine with the idea of death but terrified at the prospect of being forgotten. In exchange for his vulnerability, Gerard had told him about feeling like a bad brother and a bad son, about being consumed by his own mind and incapable of ever stopping his own wallowing in order to check on his loved ones. Frank had taken his hands halfway through the conversation and didn’t let go of them until he fell asleep. 

They ended up in an empty department store, once, walking side by side through stocked-up shelves. The floors were clean and white, the lights low, and Frank had been in the middle of his disastrous first date story when the speakers crackled to life. They played a cheesy old song that Gerard thought he’d heard before, but he could not recall its name. 

Frank grinned as soon as he heard the opening notes. “I know this one!” 

“Didn’t think you were that kind of person,” Gerard said. 

Frank hummed along to the song and took something from a shelf. “What kind?” 

“You know,” Gerard said with a shrug. “Cheesy. I thought you were a punk.” 

“Fuck you, I can be punk and like Skeeter Davis,” Frank said proudly, giving Gerard no warning when he put his hands on his shoulders and spun him around so they were face to face. “Now stay still.” 

It was then that Gerard realised they were in a nondescript makeup store, and that Frank was dangerously armed with a dark lipstick. 

“Don’t draw a dick,” Gerard warned him, feeling the waxy press of the lipstick against his cheek, the tip of his nose, and his forehead. Frank was biting his lip in concentration, still humming. 

“I’m not drawing a dick,” Frank said, leaning back after he was done. He took Gerard’s hand and pulled him along to where a small mirror was lodged between foundations and powders. He’d drawn a pentagram on Gerard’s forehead, straight lines going from under his eyes to his chin, and an odd stain on the tip of his nose that made him look like a clown. It was a mess of jagged lines and smudged edges. 

“Huh,” he said, blinking a few times at his reflection before he burst into laughter. “What the fuck, Frank.” 

“You’re a demon, crying blood and shit,” Frank explained, as if it made any sense. “Very apocalyptic.” 

In the name of revenge, Gerard picked a cherry red colour and told Frank to stay put with a hand on his chest. “You know,” he said conversationally as he painted Frank’s lips, “I actually stole my mother’s makeup once and painted my entire face.” 

It was a memory that filled him with shame, for no reason other that he’d enjoyed it. He’d scrubbed his face three times afterwards, terrified that he’d be caught with lips redder than usual and eyes lined with black pencil. 

Frank’s questioning hum brought him back to reality, and he took it as an invitation to keep talking. “Yeah. I was fourteen or fifteen, and I just – it was fun, and it looked good. I never told anyone.” 

When he was done, he turned Frank towards the mirror. It was clear from the frown on his face that he’d been expecting a makeover much like Gerard’s own, but it quickly smoothed over when he took in his clean face and painted lips. 

“Oh,” he said; “That’s rad.” 

“Yeah?” Gerard grinned. 

Frank nodded. “I shoulda done that too.” 

And without any more words, he was being pulled close. Frank put his hands on Gerard’s sticky cheeks and kissed him. 

It was good, and warm, and much more real than many of his waking moments. Gerard sighed against Frank’s lips and gently pressed him to the shelves, making a few items fall in the process. Frank’s lashes tickled his cheekbone, his hands travelled back to the nape of Gerard’s neck, keeping him there, tangling through his hair, and it was beautiful. 

“Gerard,” Frank sighed against his lips, voice shaking like he was trying to hold back tears. Judging by the look in his eyes when he pulled away, he may have been. “Gerard, I –” 

_“Don't they know it's the end of the world?”_ The speakers sang; _“It ended when you said goodbye.”_

Frank clung to him. His lips, downturned and smeared with red, were the last thing Gerard saw before he slipped under. 

Gerard woke to his empty bedroom and a newfound feeling of foreboding clawing at the inside of his heart. He did all he could to fall back asleep and return to that empty isle, back into Frank’s waiting arms, but the white of his ceiling stared back at him with something like defiance. 

He tried to go on with his day. He tried to sit down and write, well aware that he’d see Frank again at night just like he’d been doing for the past weeks, but he couldn’t stop replaying the last moments of that dream in the back of his head. Frank had looked so desperate, so overwhelmed with sadness that Gerard couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been trying to say. Dread gripped his heart in a vice, making it hard to breathe. 

“Frank,” he told the empty room. “I want to talk to you.” 

Silence. 

“I need to know,” he tried again, on the verge of panic. 

More silence. 

“Frank.” 

Something clattered to the ground. Gerard jumped. 

At first, he thought he’d knocked something over by accident. He looked down at his feet, under his desk and near the computer – nothing. 

A lone tape lay on the floor by Gerard’s bed, away from the box where he found and kept them. He picked it up to read the label, and he recognised it by the date as the last of the bunch. 

It began with another bit of home footage. Gerard recognised the East Drive house, bright and clean as it once was, as it had been in his dreams. Frank’s mother was in the picture, affectionately scolding her son behind the camera as she chopped something up on a wooden cutting board. He zoomed on her in retaliation for her gentle teasing, making her cover her face and laugh. 

Other bits and pieces of Frank’s life followed, most of them familiar to Gerard. He saw a goldfish swim in a bowl as Frank and his band rehearsed in the background, a blurry light he recognised as a failed attempt to take a clear video of the moon, a recording from the passenger’s side of Frank driving his car. 

The last piece of footage began with blades of grass rustling in the wind – a place Gerard didn’t recognise. The camera shook more than usual, and as it slowly zoomed out it became clear that whoever was recording was at the side of a beaten road. 

“Shit,” someone said behind the camera. Gerard couldn’t place the voice. 

“Fuckin’ _punk_ ,” another man spat, the video stilling on him. New face. 

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah.” The man behind the camera laughed before he moved it again, giving Gerard a glimpse of his torn jeans and ratty shoes. “Now what?” 

Gerard’s heart was lodged in his throat. The video wouldn’t stop _shaking_ , he couldn’t see anything. It moved to an old stop sign, back to the man, and to the ground again – only something else was in the picture now, a pair of dark shoes hiding in the grass. The camera trailed up, and dread built up in the pit of Gerard’s stomach as he realised those weren’t shoes, they were _legs_ , and someone was lying on the dirt at the side of the road. 

“Leave him,” one of the men said. 

Frank was on the ground, unmoving. His hair covered his eyes and joined on the ground with a pool of thick blood. The white stripes on his shirt soaked it up and rapidly changed colour. 

“What,” Gerard murmured, eyes fixated on the rickety picture on the screen. One of the men nudged Frank’s leg with his foot, and yet Frank did not move. 

“Shoulda said he had loose change.” 

“Think we can sell the camera?” 

“ _What_?” Gerard asked again, bringing his shaking hands up to his scalp. He pulled at his hair, choked on his breath, and yet Frank did not move. 

“I guess? It looks expensive.” 

It didn’t make sense. It made no fucking _sense._

Gerard drew closer. He rested his forehead on the screen, and even then, Frank did not move. 

Something rustled in the distance. The sound of a car approaching. 

“Shit,” one of the men whispered. The camera moved away from Frank’s body a second before the video cut off, and Gerard missed him terribly. 

“You lied to me,” he whispered through the tears. His empty room did not answer.


End file.
